The President began his public PR effort to get the top marginal tax rates back to their Clinton-era position today, but I think the way he framed his remarks does show a bit of his hand here. President Obama expressed optimism in a “framework” for deficit reduction being worked out before Washington disperses for the [...]

I don’t feel like it needs to be reiterated from earlier today, but this flood of commentary about whether Republicans announced a trial separation from Grover Norquist was so overblown. And Saxby Chambliss, seen as the poster child for this separation (even though he’s been discussing a Gang of Eight deal that would increase tax [...]

The big story I’m supposed to chase today concerns Republican legislative figures distancing themselves from the Grover Norquist pledge, opening the door a crack to increases in tax revenue. This is really a Washington process story about lobbying power rather than a legitimate policy evolution, however. Who are these rebels, anyway? Here’s a roster. You [...]

My original working assumption on the subject of a carbon tax, basically a levy on fossil fuel usage, working its way into the fiscal cliff negotiations was that I appreciated the thought, but doubted the reality. It’s not that a carbon tax wouldn’t raise revenue and also contribute in a smart way to reducing greenhouse [...]

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot, has become an ally in the fight to cut the military budget. He criticized the two day-old Romney/Ryan ticket yesterday, for the fact that they would increase defense spending: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his would-be vice president Paul Ryan, and defense hawks in Congress are wrong that savings can’t [...]

Grover Norquist must have seen the Bat-Signal showing that Republicans, perhaps in an effort to get out of the box he’s created for them, were flirting with allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and passing a separate tax cut after the fact, as a backwards way to increase revenue. So Norquist took to the [...]

It’s a testament to the mixed signals of the Democratic Party on taxes and the end-of-the-year fiscal situation that Matt Yglesias can talk to the same Senator on the same weekend as I and get a completely different impression. He basically saw no appetite for letting the Bush tax cuts expire completely and then coming [...]

A Cross-Post from DeSmogBlog The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as covered previously by DeSmogBlog, is the “Trojan Horse” behind mandating that climate change denial (“skepticism,” or “balance,” in its words) be taught in K-12 classrooms. Well, ALEC is at it again, it appears. Facing an IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, one of the leading advocacy groups working to [...]

Breaking a united front in the Republican Party that goes back a number of years, freshman GOP Congressman Rick Crawford (R-AR) will unveil a millionaire’s surtax proposal today. The Arkansas Republican will unveil the plan during a local television interview Thursday morning, and plans to introduce legislation when the House returns next week, according to [...]

The question of why Congress has reached for any offsets at all to pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut, against past practice of the Republican Party and economic theory, has come to a head in recent days. And all of a sudden, it’s become a worthy point of discussion. If the point [...]

The main way that the US can insulate itself from the crisis in Europe is through continuing the fiscal state of emergency in the country, as the only ballast for growth. Unfortunately, we have a dysfunctional Congress, so the only way to realistically do this is to not slip backwards and turn fiscal policy negative [...]